


Ride: Chapter Eighteen

by pinto_round_robin, semperama



Series: Ride [17]
Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Frottage, M/M, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 19:41:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4449704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinto_round_robin/pseuds/pinto_round_robin, https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperama/pseuds/semperama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris sits down hard on the edge of one of the beds and puts his head in his hands. Did he really just tell Zach that he’s ready to come out in order to be with him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ride: Chapter Eighteen

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Ato for alpha reading and helping me not freak out about this. <3

To Chris’s credit, it isn’t until he has checked into the motel room and texted Zach where to find him that he starts to panic.

It doesn’t help that the room looks like the perfect place to have a mental breakdown. The lady at the front desk told him he made it all the way to the outskirts of Oklahoma City—of course, Chris in his distraught state hadn’t even noticed they crossed the Texas-Oklahoma border—and there are no charming, old-timey roadside motels here in this urban sprawl. He’s stuck with a Motel 6. The walls are a disturbing shade of off-white, and the laminate floor makes sticky sounds when he walks across it, and the scratchy bedspread features the most eye-searing pattern he’s ever seen, a tropical hodge-podge of reds and oranges and blues that would be more at home in some chincy beachfront tourist trap than here, a thousand miles from the ocean. This is probably what the lodgings look like in hell.

Chris sits down hard on the edge of one of the beds and puts his head in his hands. Did he really just tell Zach that he’s ready to come out in order to be with him? A week ago, he was completely determined to get over him, to take this trip and use it to purge Zach from his system. And just two days ago, Zach was hemming and hawing about whether he should get back together with Miles. Now Chris is supposed to risk everything—his career, his _heart_ —for Zach? 

When he heard Zach’s voice on the phone, he was so relieved. He would have said anything to make it okay. But this is too much. Even though he’s been with guys in the past, none of them were that serious—certainly not serious enough that he would consider coming out for them. There’s no doubt in his mind that what he feels for Zach is real and worth some risks, but it’s still _scary_. Maybe he would have been better off joining the circus after all. Sticking his head in a lion’s mouth seems like a much more attractive option than facing Zach and the enormity of the decisions they have to make.

It’s going to take Zach almost four hours to make it here, and Chris has nothing to do but wait. He clicks on the old CRT television, but he can’t focus, and the sound rattles around his head like pennies in a tin can. There is a headache building from the base of his neck. Everything is fucking horrible.

Finally, he figures he might as well do something about his state of dishevelment. The conversation he has to have with Zach is going to be hard enough without being worried about the fact that his shirt is stiff with dried sweat and he smells like BO and gasoline and hot asphalt. The bored-looking receptionist in the front office gives him some detergent powder, and when he gets back to the room, he strips down and washes his shirt and boxer briefs in the sink. Once they are clean and rinsed, he drapes them over the suitcase rack to dry, then goes back into the bathroom to get _himself_ clean.

The spray in the shower is harsh and stinging, but Chris turns it as hot as he can stand it anyway and imagines it stripping away the entire day—the kiss, the phone call with Miles, the misguided attempt at running, the phone call with _Zach_. The back of his neck and the tips of his ears and tops of his arms are burned, and his skin protests the hot water and vigorous scrubbing, but it’s at least easier to focus on the pain than it is to think about what’s going to happen next. By the time he’s squeaky clean and turns off the water, he does feel marginally better. Or at least his head feels clearer. That’s something.

His clothes aren’t dry yet, so he climbs under the coarse hotel sheets naked (and refuses to wonder whether they have been washed recently). He turns on the TV again and tilts his head back against the wall, forcing himself to focus on the fluffy feel-good story being told by the local news anchor. Within minutes, he drifts off to sleep.

———— 

It’s a little after midnight by the time Zach turns into the parking lot of the Motel 6. He has been on the road four hours, but it feels like four years. The mile markers were getting farther and farther apart the closer he got to Oklahoma City, he could swear it.

For the first half of the trip, he was elated—relieved to know that Chris wanted to be with him at any cost and overjoyed that this could be the light at the end of the dark tunnel of failed relationships that he has been stuck in all his life. Chris is the most uncomplicated, ingenuous, _decent_ person he knows. Of course he’s the answer. Of course he’s always been the answer. He thinks back to what Chris said about him the other night: _”You’re an institution to my well-being.”_ It’s almost unfathomable that Chris can feel that way about him when that’s exactly the way he feels about Chris. The way he has _always_ felt about him. 

But as the Bel Air continued eating away at the asphalt and he had more time to think, he wondered if he was being too hasty. When he talked to Miles on the phone, just yesterday, he had hesitated at the thought of getting back together with him, of going back to the apartment he still thought of as home, the apartment they lived in together. Can he really change gears that quickly? Is it a good idea to risk his friendship with Chris by rushing into something? And how long will it take for _Chris_ to be just one more in a long string of people Zach has managed to push away? He has managed to survive losing everyone else, but he doesn’t know if he could survive losing Chris.

By the time Zach pulls into a spot and turns off the car, his thoughts are in tangles. It’s been a long, emotional day, and he’s exhausted, and he bets Chris is exhausted too, and he’s not looking forward to going into that room and having a serious conversation. But there’s no going back now. He gets their bags out of the trunk, mounts the outdoor staircase, finds the number that Chris texted to him, and knocks.

Thirty seconds go by without a sound from inside, so he knocks again, louder this time. “Chris? It’s me.” Please let him be in there. Please let him not have run away again.

Finally, he hears a dull thump from inside the room, and Chris’s muffled voice reaches him through the door. “Just a sec!”

It seems like it takes years, but finally the door flies open, and Chris is standing there. He’s disheveled—wearing only a wrinkled t-shirt and his underwear, his hair rumpled on one side like he fell asleep on it when it was wet. His nose and neck and arms are sunburned. He is smiling at Zach, but it’s an uncertain smile, a shy smile.

Zach’s heart stops dead in his chest. Every thought he had about taking a step back from this flies right out of his head. He crowds Chris backward away from the door, lets it slam shut behind him, drops the bags, and reaches out. Chris doesn’t even hesitate before meeting him halfway.

This time, nothing short of being hit by a bus could get Zach to stop kissing Chris. He wants to kiss him until he physically can’t anymore, until he keels over from exhaustion or until Judgment Day, whichever comes first. He backs Chris up against the wall by the door and frames his face with his hands and focuses entirely on being present in this moment, studying the way Chris’s mouth moves against his, the way his skin feels under his fingertips, the way he slips a knee between Zach’s and pushes their hips together.

“Bed,” Chris gasps between kisses, though his hands are tugging Zach in and not pushing him away. 

Eventually Zach gains enough control of the situation—and of himself—to twist Chris off the wall and back him toward the bed. They stop kissing just long enough for him to pull off Chris’s shirt, and then push him down on the bed and crawl on after him. 

A hundred desires flit through Zach’s mind as Chris arches against him and starts tugging at his clothes. He thinks there might be some lube in his shaving kit. He thinks he wants to get a good look at Chris’s cock, wants to explore it with his fingers, wants to taste it. He thinks Chris would look good face down, ass in the air, even on this ugly-as-sin bedspread. But in the end, he can’t make any of those things happen. That would mean he’d have to move, if even for a second, and he just can’t do it. He can’t slow down, can’t stop touching, can’t stop kissing.

Between the two of them, they manage to strip off Zach’s clothes and kick Chris’s briefs off the end of the bed, and then it becomes a game of touching each other as much as possible. Zach grinds himself into Chris’s hip and sucks on his neck and grips his waist for leverage. Chris claws at his back and then glides his hands down to grip his ass, urging him on.

“God, Zach. Fuck,” Chris gasps. Hearing him say his name like that feels better than Zach wants to admit, even to himself. He pushes their hips together a little harder and buries his face in the crook of Chris’s neck, inhaling soap and sweat. If he just gets close enough, maybe he’ll forget where he ends and Chris begins. 

Chris manages to work a hand between their bodies and align their cocks, wrapping his fingers around them both. Zach groans and pushes into Chris’s grip so that their erections slide against each other, revelling in the friction of skin on silky skin. There’s not much room to move, and Zach isn’t willing to give up some closeness to get more leverage, but it doesn’t matter. Chris strokes and squeezes and Zach thrusts shallowly, and the friction combined with Chris’s hot breath on the side of his face, his voice murmuring encouragements in his ear, is enough to have Zach teetering right on the edge in record time.

“Chris, I’m—” he warns. It’s too fast, _too_ fast, but he’s overwhelmed by Chris, his head spinning, his heart pounding. He can’t slow down.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Chris groans, his hips coming off the bed.

Zach doesn’t know who starts coming first, only that Chris’s fingers are suddenly slick, and the last few strokes of his hand have them both shuddering and cursing until they are spent. He collapses onto Chris’s chest, heedless of the mess between their bodies, and tilts his head down for another kiss—and then another, and then another. There is a lot of time to make up for, a lot of kissing to make up for. 

And Zach is a little scared of what happens when the kissing stops.

————

Afterward, once they are cleaned up and cuddled up on the bed, the guilt hits hard. Chris pushes his fingers through the hair on Zach’s chest again and again and tries to focus on the way Zach’s thumb is caressing the outside of his arm, but it feels like he doesn’t deserve any of it. He swallows, and then swallows again, opens and closes his mouth like a fish. But it’s Zach who breaks the silence.

“You’re having second thoughts,” he says. It’s not a question. Chris can’t help but resent that it’s not a question, even if it is the truth.

“Not exactly,” he lies.

“Yeah you are,” Zach insists with a sigh. He sounds a little scared, and that makes Chris feel even worse. “Come on, Chris, if ever there was a time we should be honest with each other.”

“Okay, okay.” He trails his fingers down Zach’s chest and focusing intently on their path, as if that will let him forget that this conversation is happening. “You’re right. I just...it’s scary. I want to be with you—I do—but it hasn’t been that long since you broke up with Miles, and...you’re one of my _best friends_ , and if it doesn’t work out, then it’s just...it’s a lot to risk.”

Zach stiffens. A few seconds pass before he speaks. “Our friendship, you mean? Or your career?”

“Both,” Chris admits, willing Zach not to get mad. “That has to be a consideration. You know it has to be. I’m not saying it has to be a _big_ consideration, but it’s one of a few reasons why I don’t think it’s smart to rush into anything. If I hold your hand in the 7-11 tomorrow and you decide the next day you’re going back to Miles...” 

Chris would like to think that wouldn’t happen, that Zach is better than that, but just saying the words out loud makes him exponentially more scared. He thinks back on Zach biting the strawberry out of his hand back at that gas station, holding his hand on the skywalk, telling him he wanted him and then pushing him away the next morning. There have been so many mixed signals, and he’s not sure if he can handle any more. He sits up a little bit, shrugging off Zach’s arm. Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe all of this was a bad idea.

“What if...what if we just finish the road trip?” Zach says, effectively stopping Chris’s building panic in its tracks. He has always been good at that—at settling Chris down. On long press tours, on hectic red carpets. It shouldn’t be such a surprise that that skill extends to post-coital freakouts. 

“How does that help?” Chris asks, frowning cautiously.

Zach shrugs one shoulder and runs his fingers through his hair. “Well, we only have three more states to get through...and one’s just a corner of Kansas, so that hardly counts, and I’ve heard the last stretch through Illinois is pretty boring. We’ll be stuck in the car together for...however many more days, with plenty of time to think about whether or not this is what we really want. Maybe that’s just what we need. Open road and time to think. Then, at the end, we can reevaluate.”

It’s not a bad idea, Chris thinks. The last thing he wants is to go back and face the real world again. This trip was supposed to be an escape, and he can’t help but feel like he has even more to escape now than when it began. And he likes the idea of hitting the road again with Zach in the passenger seat, this time without all those unsaid things piled up between them. Maybe at the end of the road, this will all look a lot less scary.

“So...like a relationship trial run?”

“Sort of. I guess,” Zach says, ducking his head like he’s trying to hide his uncertainty. “More like...time without the rest of the world breathing down our necks.”

Chris takes a deep breath and then blows it out slowly, reaching for Zach’s hand. He gives it a squeeze like he’s trying to comfort him, but really he feels like he’s comforting himself. And it _is_ comforting. Touching Zach feels so natural. Being with him feel natural. It would be the easiest thing in the world to give into if there weren’t so many other factors. But he at least wants to give into it for now. “Okay,” he says with as much conviction as he can muster. “Okay, let’s keep going. Together.”

Zach looks up again beams at him. It’s the most genuine and uninhibited smile Chris thinks he’s seen on him since...he can’t even remember. Since before filming ended, at least. He leans into Zach again and Zach puts his arm back around his shoulders and tips their heads together. It’s a nice moment. The storm in Chris’s head has gentled to a light drizzle.

“So what do you want to do tomorrow?” Zach asks.

“Well...we could explore Oklahoma City,” Chris says, though he has no idea what there is to do around here. He didn’t have his navigator with him on the drive from Amarillo. “Or just keep heading down the road and save our sight-seeing for places that are less...bustling. Or, hey, I happen to know that there’s a circus in town somewhere…”

Zach’s chuckle cuts him off. “Let’s see how we feel in the morning.” Then, after a pause, he adds, softer, “I’m really glad you let me come with you on this trip.”

Chris closes his eyes and tries to imagine how different things would be if he had come by himself. With the third Trek movie over, when would he have even seen Zach again? Would they have started to drift apart? Would Zach have gotten back together with Miles?

“I’m glad too,” he murmurs, curling his arm around Zach’s middle. Who knows what will happen at the end of the road, but at least this way, they have a chance.


End file.
